Position Statement: Social Justice

The universal goal for society includes freedom, peace, prosperity, pursuit of happiness, equal treatment under the law, and accountability for harm done.

Parts of those core principles are often lumped together into what has become known as social justice. The following are elements of my social justice program.

Libertarians prefer more prosperity for everyone by reducing regulation, red tape, and taxes and by pursuing policies which reduce unfair influence by big business and other powerful special interests.

We must reduce dependence on state and federal government non-solutions. By nature (and often by design) government is politically-driven, delivers services inefficiently, and is an uncertain source of funding for those helping themselves or helping others. After all, does the government really do a better job of delivering "social services" than non-government charity, religious and non-profit groups such as the Salvation Army?

Communities must keep and use resources locally, to empower communities to address people's needs. Consider this: by avoiding one layer of government (federal) 30% more money is available for the intended uses per tax dollar collected. By avoiding two layers of government (federal and state) including compliance cost, almost twice as much could be spent on the targeted end-use, per tax dollar collected.*

*Assuming 20% general and administrative overhead rate for each layer of government.

Clearly I believe that communities -- not governments -- are critical to an effective social justice framework. Without the social fabric provided by a strong community, social justice will always be elusive. As your congressperson I promise to do whatever possible to work within our district to coordinate, catalyze, and organize more communities.

Any social justice framework must have education at its roots. Education is the key to enabling as many problem solvers, service providers, leaders, and innovators, as possible, from all parts of our diverse community. We must demand more education choice and variety. We must demand much higher levels of success from government schools.

Another core facet of my social justice program is to place more emphasis on the principle of equal treatment under the law -- a principle that our leaders do not focus on nearly enough.

Finally, the war on drugs is a major source of social injustice! The war on drugs was established based primarily on racial prejudice. Today, though the war on drugs is not driven by prejudice per se, in practice it has a very disproportionate and negative effect on poor communities and on people of color. A key element of my social justice program is to transform the war on drugs into a program emphasizing success, prosperity, education, personal responsibility and medical treatment for addicts.